The middle class is a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy. The very definition of the term "middle class" is highly political and vigorously contested by various schools of political and economic philosophy. Modern social theorists - and especially economists (with widely divergent open and hidden political motivations behind their arguments) - have defined and re-defined the term "middle class" in order to serve their particular political ends. The definitions of the term "middle class" therefore are the result of the more- or less-scientific methods used when delineating the parameters of what is and isn't "middle class".

In Weberian socioeconomic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class. The common measures of what constitutes middle class vary significantly among cultures. One of the narrowest definitions limits it to those in the middle fifth of the nation's income ladder. A wider characterization includes everyone, but the poorest 20% and the wealthiest 20%.[1]

In modern American vernacular usage, the term "middle class" is most often used as a self-description by those persons whom academics and Marxists would otherwise identify as the working class which are below both the upper class and the true middle class, but above those in poverty. This leads to considerable ambiguity over the meaning of the term "middle class" in American usage. Sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert and Joseph Kahl see this American self-described "middle class" (i.e. working class) as the most populous class in the United States.[2]

The term "middle class" is first attested in James Bradshaw's 1745 pamphlet Scheme to prevent running Irish Wools to France.[3][4] Another phrase used in Early modern Europe was "the middling sort".[5][6]

The term "middle class" has had several, sometimes contradictory, meanings. Friedrich Engels saw the category in Marxist terms as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry of Europe in late-feudalist society.[7][need quotation to verify] While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city. In France, the middle classes helped drive the French Revolution.[8] This "middle class" eventually overthrew the ruling monarchists of feudal society, thus becoming the new ruling class or bourgeoisie in the new capitalist-dominated societies.[9]

The modern usage of the term "middle-class", however, dates to the 1913 UK Registrar-General's report, in which the statistician T.H.C. Stevenson identified the middle class as that falling between the upper-class and the working-class.[citation needed] Included as belonging to the middle-class are: professionals, managers, and senior civil servants. The chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle-class is possession of significant human capital.

Within capitalism, "middle-class" initially referred to the bourgeoisie; later, with the further differentiation of classes in the course of development of capitalist societies, the term came to be synonymous with the term petite bourgeoisie. The endless boom-and-bust cycles of capitalist economies results in the periodical and more or less temporary impoverisation and proletarianisation of much of the petit bourgeois world resulting in their moving back and forth between working-class and petit-bourgeois status as they are whipsawed by the vicissitudes of the capitalist system. Vulgar modern definitions of "middle class" tend to ignore the fact that the classical petit-bourgeoisie is and has always been the owner of a small-to medium-sized business whose income is derived almost exclusively from the exploitation of workers; "middle class" came to refer to the combination of the labour aristocracy, the professionals, and the salaried white collar workers.

The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, social network, manners or values, etc. These are all related, but are far from deterministically dependent. The following factors are often ascribed in modern usage to a "middle class":[by whom?]

In the United States by the end of the twentieth century, more people identified themselves as middle-class than as lower or "working" class (with insignificant numbers identifying themselves as upper-class).[13] The Labour Party in the UK, which grew out of the organised labour movement and originally drew almost all of its support from the working-class, reinvented itself under Tony Blair in the 1990s as "New Labour", a party competing with the Conservative Party for the votes of the middle-class as well as those of the Labour Party's traditional group of voters - the working-class. By 2011 almost three-quarters of British people were found to identify themselves as middle-class.[14]

In Marxism, which defines social classes according to their relationship with the means of production, the "middle class" is said to be the class below the ruling class and above the proletariat in the Marxist social schema and is synonymous with the term "petit-" or "petty-bourgeoisie". Marxist writers have used the term in two distinct but related ways.[15] In the first sense it is used for the bourgeoisie, the urban merchant and professional class that arose between the aristocracy and the proletariat in the waning years of feudalism in the Marxist model. V. I. Lenin, stated that the "peasantry ... in Russia constitute eight- or nine-tenths of the petty bourgeoisie".[16][17] However, in modern developed countries, Marxist writers define the petite bourgeoisie as primarily comprising, as the name implies, owners of small to medium-sized businesses who derive their income from the exploitation of wage-laborers (and who are in turn exploited by the "big" bourgeoisie i.e. bankers, owners of large corporate trusts, etc.) as well as the highly educated professional class of doctors, engineers, architects, lawyers, university professors, salaried middle-management of capitalist enterprises of all sizes, etc. – as the "middle class" which stands between the ruling capitalist "owners of the means of production" and the working class (whose income is derived solely from hourly wages).

Pioneer 20th century American Marxist theoreticianLouis C. Fraina (Lewis Corey) defined the middle class as "the class of independent small enterprisers, owners of productive property from which a livelihood is derived."[18] Included in this social category, from Fraina's perspective, were "propertied farmers" but not propertyless tenant farmers. Middle class also included salaried managerial and supervisory employees but not "the masses of propertyless, dependent salaried employees.[18] Fraina speculated that the entire category of salaried employees might be adequately described as a "new middle class" in economic terms, although this remained a social grouping in which "most of whose members are a new proletariat".[18]

According to Christopher B. Doob, a sociology writer, the middle-class grooms each future generation to take over from the previous one. He states that, to do this the middle class have almost developed a system for turning children of the middle-class into successful citizens. Allegedly those who are categorized under the American middle-class give education great importance, and value success in education as one of the chief factors in establishing the middle-class life. Supposedly the parents place a strong emphasis on the significance of quality education and its effects on success later in life. He believes that the best way to understand education through the eyes of middle-class citizens would be through social reproduction as middle-class parents breed their own offspring to become successful members of the middle-class. Members of the middle-class consciously use their available sources of capital to prepare their children for the adult world.[19]

The middle-class childhood is often characterized by an authoritative parenting approach with a combination of parental warmth, support and control. Parents set some rules establishing limits, but overall this approach creates a greater sense of trust, security, and self-confidence.[20]

In addition to an often authoritative parenting style, middle-class parents provide their children with valuable sources of capital.[21]

Parents of middle-class children make use of their social capital when it comes to their children's education as they seek out other parents and teachers for advice. Some parents even develop regular communication with their child's teachers, asking for regular reports on behavior and grades. When problems do occur, middle-class parents are quick to "enlist the help of professionals when they feel their children need such services".[22] The middle-class parents' involvement in their children's schooling underlines their recognition of its importance.[23]

In 1977 Barbara Ehrenreich and her then husband John defined a new class in United States as "salaried menial workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor ... [is] ... the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations"; the Ehrenreichs named this group the "professional-managerial class".[24]
This group of middle-class professionals are distinguished from other social classes by their training and education (typically business qualifications and university degrees),[25] with example occupations including academics and teachers, social workers, engineers, managers, nurses, and middle-level administrators.[26] The Ehrenreichs developed their definition from studies by André Gorz, Serge Mallet, and others, of a "new working class", which, despite education and a perception of themselves as being middle class, were part of the working class because they did not own the means of production, and were wage earners paid to produce a piece of capital.[27] The professional-managerial class seeks higher rank status and salary,[28] and tend to have incomes above the average for their country.[29]

Don’t care how, I want it now! It is this conflict between thriftiness and a desire for status and prestige that often sees them derided as ngehe (awful). Middle class people often contribute to the very problems that they are so vocal about. Additionally, they are often insensitive to the needs of poor and marginalised, and are often reluctant to participate in community remediation activities. This hypocrisy and apparent lack of concern for social justice is what makes others brand them ngehe (awful).[31]

It is important to understand that modern definitions of the term "middle class" are often politically motivated and vary according to the exigencies of political purpose which they were conceived to serve in the first place as well as due to the multiplicity of more- or less-scientific methods used to measure and compare "wealth" between modern advanced industrial states (where poverty is relatively low and the distribution of wealth more egalitarian in a relative sense) and in developing countries (where poverty and a profoundly unequal distribution of wealth crush the vast majority of the population). Many of these methods of comparison have been harshly criticised; for example, economist Thomas Piketty, in his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", describes one of the most commonly used comparative measures of wealth across the globe – the Gini coefficient – as being an example of "synthetic indices ... which mix very different things, such as inequality with respect to labor and capital, so that it is impossible to distinguish clearly among the multiple dimensions of inequality and the various mechanisms at work."[32]

In February 2009, The Economist asserted that over half the world's population now belongs to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, so that they do not live from hand to mouth as the poor do, and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter. This allows people to buy consumer goods, improve their health care, and provide for their children's education. Most of the emerging middle class consists of people who are middle-class by the standards of the developing world but not the rich one, since their money incomes do not match developed country levels, but the percentage of it which is discretionary does. By this definition, the number of middle-class people in Asia exceeded that in the West sometime around 2007 or 2008.[33]

The Economist's article pointed out that in many emerging countries the middle class has not grown incrementally, but explosively. The rapid growth results primarily from their new, vastly broader definition of "middle class". The point at which the poor start entering the middle class by the millions is alleged to be the time when poor countries get the maximum benefit from cheap labour through international trade, before they price themselves out of world markets for cheap goods. It is also a period of rapid urbanization, when subsistence farmers abandon marginal farms to work in factories, resulting in a several-fold increase in their economic productivity before their wages catch up to international levels. That stage was reached in China some time between 1990 and 2005, when the Chinese "middle class" grew from 15% to 62% of the population, and is just being reached in India now.

The Economist predicted that surge across the poverty line should continue for a couple of decades and the global middle class will grow enormously between now and 2030.
Based on the rapid growth, scholars expect the global middle class to be the driving force for sustainable development. This assumption, however, is contested.[34]

As the American middle class is estimated by some researchers to comprise approximately 45% of the population,[35][36][37]The Economist's article would put the size of the American middle class below the world average. This difference is due to the extreme difference in definitions between The Economist's and many other models.[discuss]

In 2010, a working paper by the OECD asserted that 1.8 billion people were now members of the global "middle class".[38] Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report 2014, released in October 2014, estimated that one billion adults belonged to the "middle class", with wealth anywhere between the range of $10,000–$100,000.[39]

According to a study carried out by the Pew Research Center, a combined 16% of the world's population in 2011 were "upper-middle income" and "upper income".[40]

In 2012, the "middle class" in Russia was estimated as 15% of the whole population. Due to sustainable growth, the pre-crisis level was exceeded.[41] In 2015, research from the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated that around 15% of the Russian population are "firmly middle class", while around another 25% are "on the periphery".[42]

According to a 2014 study by Standard Bank economist Simon Freemantle, a total of 15.3 million households in 11 surveyed African nations are middle-class. These include Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.[45] In South Africa, a report conducted by the Institute for Race Relations in 2015[46] estimated that between 10%-20% of South Africans are middle class, based on various criteria.[47] An earlier study estimated that in 2008 21.3% of South Africans were members of the middle class.[48]

A study by EIU Canback indicates 90% of Africans fall below an income of $10 a day. The proportion of Africans in the $10–$20 middle class (excluding South Africa), rose from 4.4% to only 6.2% between 2004 and 2014. Over the same period, the proportion of "upper middle" income ($20–$50 a day) went from 1.4% to 2.3%.[49]

According to a 2014 study by the German Development Institute, the middle class of Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 14 million to 31 million people between 1990 and 2010.[44]

The American middle class is smaller than middle classes across Western Europe, but its income is higher, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. and 11 European nations.[51]

The median disposable (after-tax) income of middle-class households in the U.S. was $60,884 in 2010. With the exception of Luxembourg – a virtual city-state where the median income was $71,799 – the disposable incomes of middle-class households in the other 10 Western European countries in the study trailed well behind the American middle class.[51]

The numbers below reflect the middle, upper, and lower share of all adults by country by net wealth (not income). Unlike that of the upper class, wealth of the middle and lowest quintile consists substantially of non-financial assets, specifically home equity. Factors which explain differences in home equity include housing prices and home ownership rates. According to the OECD, the vast majority of financial assets in every country analysed is found in the top of the wealth distribution.[52][53]

^Lenin, V. I. (25 February 1907). "The Bolsheviks and the Petty Bourgeoisie". Marxists Internet Archive. Novy Luch. Retrieved 8 June 2018. In particular, the, peasantry, who in Russia constitute eight- or nine-tenths of the petty bourgeoisie, are struggling primarily for land.

^Lenin, V.I. (October 9–10, 1917). "The Tasks of the Revolution". Marxists Internet Archive. Rabochy Put. Retrieved 8 June 2018. Russia is a country of the petty bourgeoisie, by far the greater part of the population belonging to this class.CS1 maint: Date format (link)

^Doob, Christopher B. (2013). "The Badly Besieged Middle Class". Social Inequality and Social Stratification in US Society. New Jersey: Pearson. pp. 157–167.

^Demo, David H.; Martha J. Cox (2000). "Families with Young Children: A Review off Research in the 1990s". Journal of Marriage and the Family. 62 (November): 876–95. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00876.x.

^Doob, Christopher B. (2013). "The Badly Besieged Middle Class". Social Inequality and Social Stratification in US Society. New Jersey: Pearson. pp. 157–67.

1.
Social class
–
Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social historians. However, there is not a consensus on the best definition of the class, the precise measurements of what determines social class in society has varied over time. According to philosopher Karl Marx, class is determined entirely by ones relationship to the means of production, the term class is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth, in order to determine military service obligations. In the late 18th century, the class began to replace classifications such as estates, rank. Historically social class and behavior was sometimes laid down in law, definitions of social classes reflect a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and Structural functionalism, the common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors, objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception of their similarity, Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of ones own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time and this is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology. Marxists explain the history of civilized societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society, in the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. Furthermore, in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, an industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers and sergeants who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. This would mark the beginning of a society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money. Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, that saw social class as emerging from an interplay between class, status and power. Weber believed that class position was determined by a relationship to the means of production. Weber derived many of his key concepts on social stratification by examining the structure of many countries. He noted that contrary to Marxs theories, stratification was based on more than simply ownership of capital, Weber pointed out that some members of the aristocracy lack economic wealth yet might nevertheless have political power. Likewise in Europe, many wealthy Jewish families in lack prestige and honor, Class, A persons economic position in a society

2.
Max Weber
–
Karl Emil Maximilian Max Weber was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, political economist and the husband of Marianne Schnitger. His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research, Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Unlike Durkheim, he did not believe in monocausality and rather proposed that for any outcome there can be multiple causes and he argued that it was in the basic tenets of Protestantism to boost capitalism. Thus, it can be said that the spirit of capitalism is inherent to Protestant religious values, against Marxs historical materialism, Weber emphasised the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity that successfully claims a monopoly of the use of physical force within a given territory. He was also the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional and his analysis of bureaucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are increasingly based on rational-legal authority. Weber also made a variety of contributions in economic history, as well as economic theory. Webers analysis of modernity and rationalisation significantly influenced the theory associated with the Frankfurt School. After the First World War, Max Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party and he also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, Karl Emil Maximilian Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Prussia. Weber Sr. s involvement in public life immersed his home in politics and academia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who became a sociologist and economist. Before entering the university, he would read many other classical works, in 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. After a year of service, he transferred to the University of Berlin. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior lawyer, in 1886 Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and this work was used as part of a longer work On the History of Trading Companies in the Middle Ages, based on South-European Sources, published in the same year. Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined the University of Berlins faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government. In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in social policy

3.
Upper class
–
The upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of the wealthiest members of society, who also wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the class is generally distinguished by immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation. Prior to the 20th century, the aristocracy was widely used. The term is used in conjunction with terms like upper-middle class, middle class. Upper-class status commonly derived from the position of ones family. Much of the population that composed the upper consisted of aristocrats, ruling families, titled people. These people were born into their status and historically there was not much movement across class boundaries. This is to say that it was harder for an individual to move up in class simply because of the structure of society. The Transatlantic Slave Trade also helped create a class of white Europeans while maintaining a lower class of black Europeans, Americans and Africans. This fact is often edited out of academic research both in publications and online ones such as Wikipedia. In many countries, the upper class was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other social classes. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often members of the titled nobility, though not necessarily. Some upper classes were almost entirely untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the upper class traditionally comprised the landed gentry and the aristocracy of noble families with hereditary titles. The vast majority of post-medieval aristocratic families originated in the merchant class and were ennobled between the 14th and 19th centuries while intermarrying with the old nobility and gentry. Since the Second World War, the term has come to encompass rich, members of the English gentry organized the colonization of Virginia and New England and ruled these colonies for generations forming the foundation of the American upper class or East Coast Elite. In this respect, the US differs little from such as the UK where membership of the upper class is also dependent on other factors. The American upper class is estimated to less than 1% of the population

4.
Poverty
–
Poverty is general scarcity or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. It is a concept, which includes social, economic. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the lack of necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing. Absolute poverty is meant to be about the independent of location. After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made producing goods increasingly less expensive, of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, to provide enough yield to feed the population. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedoms, Poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. The World Bank forecasts that 702.1 million people, down from 1.75 billion in 1990, of these, about 347.1 million people lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and 231.3 million lived in South Asia. According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty fell from 37. 1% to 9. 6%. Nevertheless, given the current economic model, built on GDP, extreme poverty is a global challenge, it is observed in all parts of the world, including developed economies. UNICEF estimates half the children live in poverty. It has been argued by some academics that the policies promoted by global financial institutions such as the IMF. Another estimate places the true scale of poverty much higher than the World Bank, with an estimated 4.3 billion people living with less than $5 a day and unable to meet basic needs adequately. In 2012 it is estimated that, given a poverty line of $1.25 a day 1.2 billion people lived in poverty, the word poverty comes from old French poverté, from Latin paupertās from pauper. The English word poverty via Anglo-Norman povert, there are several definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation it is placed in, and the views of the person giving the definition. Income Poverty, a familys income fails to meet a federally established threshold that differs across countries, United Nations, Fundamentally, poverty is the inability of having choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of capacity to participate effectively in society. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and it means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation. World Bank, Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions and it includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity

5.
Sociology
–
Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder. Many sociologists aim to research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare. Subject matter ranges from the level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems. The traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, the range of social scientific methods has also expanded. Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-twentieth century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches towards the analysis of society. There is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields, Sociology is distinguished from various general social studies courses, which bear little relation to sociological theory or to social-science research-methodology. The US National Science Foundation classifies sociology as a STEM field, Sociological reasoning pre-dates the foundation of the discipline. Social analysis has origins in the stock of Western knowledge and philosophy. The origin of the survey, i. e, there is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arab writings. The word sociology is derived from both Latin and Greek origins, the Latin word, socius, companion, the suffix -logy, the study of from Greek -λογία from λόγος, lógos, word, knowledge. It was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript, Sociology was later defined independently by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, in 1838. Comte used this term to describe a new way of looking at society, Comte had earlier used the term social physics, but that had subsequently been appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the understanding of the social realm. Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, Comte gave a powerful impetus to the development of sociology, an impetus which bore fruit in the later decades of the nineteenth century. To say this is not to claim that French sociologists such as Durkheim were devoted disciples of the high priest of positivism. To be sure, beginnings can be traced back well beyond Montesquieu, for example, Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a science of society nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin, Marx may be regarded as the father of modern sociology

6.
Early modern Europe
–
Early modern Europe is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century. The early modern period was characterized by changes in many realms of human endeavor. Capitalist economies began to develop in a nascent form, first in the northern Italian republics such as Genoa and Venice and in the cities of the Low Countries, later in France, Germany and England. The early modern period saw the rise and dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. As such, the modern period is often associated with the decline and eventual disappearance of feudalism. The Protestant Reformation greatly altered the balance of Christendom, creating a formidable new opposition to the dominance of the Catholic Church. The early modern period also witnessed the circumnavigation of the Earth, the beginning of the early modern period is not clear-cut, but is generally accepted to be in the late 15th century or early 16th century. Movable type, which allowed characters to be arranged to form words. 1453 The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans signalled the end of the Byzantine empire,1494 French king Charles VIII invaded Italy, drastically altering the status quo and beginning a series of wars which would punctuate the Italian Renaissance. 1513 First formulation of modern politics with the publication of Machiavellis The Prince,1517 The Reformation begins with Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. 1526 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor gains the crowns of Bohemia,1545 The Council of Trent marks the end of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The role of nobles in the Feudal System had yielded to the notion of the Divine Right of Kings during the Middle Ages, among the most notable political changes included the abolition of serfdom and the crystallization of kingdoms into nation-states. Perhaps even more significantly, with the advent of the Reformation, many kings and rulers used this radical shift in the understanding of the world to further consolidate their sovereignty over their territories. For instance, many of the Germanic states converted to Protestantism in an attempt to out of the grasp of the Pope. The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century movement to reform the Catholic Church in Europe, in November he mailed them to various religious authorities of the day. The Reformation ended in division and the establishment of new church movements, the four most important traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were Lutheranism, the Reformed tradition, Anglicanism, and the Anabaptists. Subsequent Protestant churches generally trace their roots back to these four schools of the Reformation. This period refers to England 1558–1603, the Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and is often considered a golden age in English history

7.
Friedrich Engels
–
Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, social scientist, journalist, and businessman. He founded Marxist theory together with Karl Marx, in 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in Manchester. In 1848, he co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx, though he also authored and co-authored many other works, after Marxs death, Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organised Marxs notes on the Theories of Surplus Value and he also made contributions to family economics. Friedrich Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen, Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Barmen was an expanding industrial metropolis, and Friedrich was the eldest son of a wealthy German cotton textile manufacturer. His father, Friedrich, Sr. was a Pietistic Protestant, as he grew up, however, he developed atheistic beliefs and his relationship with his parents became strained. His mother wrote to him of her concerns, She said that he had gone too far. She continued, You have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper and saw therein that a warrant was out for my sons arrest, when his mother wrote, Engels was in hiding in Brussels, Belgium, soon to make his way to Switzerland. In 1849, he returned to the Kingdom of Bavaria for the Baden, at 17, Friedrich had dropped out of high school due to family circumstances. He spent a year in Barmen, in 1838, his father sent the young man to work as a nonsalaried office clerk at a commercial house in Bremen. His parents expected that he would follow his father into a career in business and it would be some years before he joined the family firm. Whilst at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy of Hegel, in September 1838, he published his first work, a poem entitled The Bedouin, in the Bremisches Conversationsblatt No.40. He also engaged in literary and journalistic work. Also while at Bremen, Engels began writing newspaper articles critiquing the societal ills of industrialisation and he wrote under a pseudonym, Friedrich Oswald, to avoid connecting his life in a Pietist industrialist family with his provocative writings. In 1841, Engels joined the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery and he was assigned to Berlin, where he attended university lectures at the University of Berlin and began to associate with groups of Young Hegelians. He anonymously published articles in the Rheinische Zeitung, exposing the poor employment, the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung was Karl Marx. Engels did not meet Marx until late November 1842, Engels acknowledged the influence of German philosophy on his intellectual development throughout his life

8.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa

9.
Bourgeoisie
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A legally defined class of the Middle Ages to the end of the Ancien Régime in France, that of inhabitants having the rights of citizenship and political rights in a city. This bourgeoisie destroyed aristocratic privilege and established civic equality after the French monarchy collapsed, the aristocracy crumbled because it refused to reform institutions and financial systems. An affluent and often opulent stratum of the class who stand opposite the proletariat class. In English, bourgeoisie identified a social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism, hence, since the 19th century, the term bourgeoisie usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society. The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in such as the drame bourgeois and bourgeois tragedy. The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and this urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organisation into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen conflicted with their feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed. In English, the bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle classes, a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of four evolving social layers, petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie consists of people who have experienced a brief ascension in social mobility for one or two generations. It usually starts with a trade or craft, and by the second and third generation, the petite bourgeois would belong to the British lower middle class and would be American middle income. They are distinguished mainly by their mentality, and would differentiate themselves from the proletariat or working class and this class would include artisans, small traders, shopkeepers, and small farm owners. They are not employed, but may not be able to afford employees themselves, the moyenne bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie contains people who have solid incomes and assets, but not the aura of those who have become established at a higher level. They tend to belong to a family that has been bourgeois for three or more generations, some members of this class may have relatives from similar backgrounds, or may even have aristocratic connections. The moyenne bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the British and American upper-middle classes, the grande bourgeoisie are families that have been bourgeois since the 19th century, or for at least four or five generations. Members of these tend to marry with the aristocracy or make other advantageous marriages. This bourgeoisie family has acquired an established historical and cultural heritage over the decades, the names of these families are generally known in the city where they reside, and their ancestors have often contributed to the regions history. These families are respected and revered and they belong to the upper class, and in the British class system are considered part of the gentry

10.
Capitalism
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Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, economists, political economists, and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free market capitalism, welfare capitalism, different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. Most existing capitalist economies are mixed economies, which elements of free markets with state intervention. Capitalism has existed under many forms of government, in different times, places. Following the decline of mercantilism, mixed capitalist systems became dominant in the Western world, Capitalism has been criticized for prioritizing profit over social good, natural resources, and the environment, and that is a cause of inequality and economic instabilities. Supporters believe that it provides better products through competition, and creates strong economic growth, the term capitalist, meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term capitalism. It dates back to the mid-17th century, capitalist is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a late Latin word based on caput, meaning head – also the origin of chattel and cattle in the sense of movable property. Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries in the sense of referring to funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, by 1283 it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm. It was frequently interchanged with a number of other words – wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property, the Hollandische Mercurius uses capitalists in 1633 and 1654 to refer to owners of capital. In French, Étienne Clavier referred to capitalistes in 1788, six years before its first recorded English usage by Arthur Young in his work Travels in France, David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, referred to the capitalist many times. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, used capitalist in his work Table Talk, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used the term capitalist in his first work, What is Property. To refer to the owners of capital, benjamin Disraeli used the term capitalist in his 1845 work Sybil. The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc in 1850, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the capitalistic system. And to the capitalist mode of production in Das Kapital, the use of the word capitalism in reference to an economic system appears twice in Volume I of Das Kapital, p.124, and in Theories of Surplus Value, tome II, p.493. Marx did not extensively use the form capitalism but instead those of capitalist, and capitalist mode of production, also according to the OED, Carl Adolph Douai, a German-American socialist and abolitionist, used the phrase private capitalism in 1863. Capital has existed incipiently on a scale for centuries, in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities. Simple commodity exchange, and consequently simple commodity production, which are the basis for the growth of capital from trade, have a very long history

11.
Etiquette
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Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group. The French word étiquette, literally signifying a tag or label, was used in a sense in English around 1750. Etiquette has changed and evolved over the years, in the 3rd millennium BC, Ptahhotep wrote The Maxims of Ptahhotep. The Maxims were conformist precepts extolling such civil virtues as truthfulness, self-control, learning by listening to everybody and knowing that human knowledge is never perfect are a leitmotif. Avoiding open conflict wherever possible should not be considered weakness, stress is placed on the pursuit of justice, although it is conceded that it is a gods command that prevails in the end. Some of the maxims refer to ones behaviour when in the presence of the great, how to choose the right master, others teach the correct way to lead through openness and kindness. Greed is the base of all evil and should be guarded against, while generosity towards family, confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher whose philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. Baldassare Castiglione, count of Casatico, was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author, who is probably most famous for his authorship of The Book of the Courtier. The work was an example of a book, dealing with questions of the etiquette and morality of the courtier, and was very influential in 16th century European court circles. ”During the Enlightenment era. Upwardly mobile middle class bourgeoisie increasingly tried to identify themselves with the elite through their adopted artistic preferences and their standards of behaviour. They became preoccupied with precise rules of etiquette, such as when to show emotion, influential in this new discourse was a series of essays on the nature of politeness in a commercial society, penned by the philosopher Lord Shaftesbury in the early 18th century. Its stated goal was to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, the allied notion of civility – referring to a desired social interaction which valued sober and reasoned debate on matters of interest – also became an important quality for the polite classes. Established rules and procedures for proper behaviour as well as conventions, were outlined by gentlemens clubs. Periodicals, including The Tatler and The Spectator, infused politeness into English coffeehouse conversation, as their explicit purpose lay in the reformation of English manners and morals. It was Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield who first used the word etiquette in its meaning, in his Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World. This work comprised over 400 letters written from 1737 or 1738 and continuing until his sons death in 1768, the letters were first published by his sons widow Eugenia Stanhope in 1774. Chesterfield endeavoured to decouple the issue of manners from conventional morality, the Letters were full of elegant wisdom and perceptive observation and deduction. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners, it is the manner in which the mob express their joy at silly things

12.
Lawyer
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A lawyer is a person who practices law, as an advocate, barrister, attorney, counselor or solicitor or chartered legal executive. The role of the lawyer varies greatly across legal jurisdictions, in practice, legal jurisdictions exercise their right to determine who is recognized as being a lawyer. As a result, the meaning of the lawyer may vary from place to place. In Australia, the lawyer is used to refer to both barristers and solicitors. In Canada, the word lawyer refers to individuals who have been called to the bar or. Common law lawyers in Canada are formally and properly called barristers and solicitors, however, in Quebec, civil law advocates often call themselves attorney and sometimes barrister and solicitor in English. The Legal Services Act 2007 defines the activities that may only be performed by a person who is entitled to do so pursuant to the Act. Lawyer is not a protected title, in India, the term lawyer is often colloquially used, but the official term is advocate as prescribed under the Advocates Act,1961. In Scotland, the word refers to a more specific group of legally trained people. It specifically includes advocates and solicitors, in a generic sense, it may also include judges and law-trained support staff. In the United States, the term refers to attorneys who may practice law. It is never used to refer to patent agents or paralegals, in fact, there are regulatory restrictions on non-lawyers like paralegals practicing law. Other nations tend to have terms for the analogous concept. In most countries, particularly civil law countries, there has been a tradition of giving many legal tasks to a variety of civil law notaries, clerks, and scriveners. Several countries that originally had two or more legal professions have since fused or united their professions into a type of lawyer. Most countries in this category are common law countries, though France, in countries with fused professions, a lawyer is usually permitted to carry out all or nearly all the responsibilities listed below. Arguing a clients case before a judge or jury in a court of law is the province of the barrister in England. However, the boundary between barristers and solicitors has evolved, in England today, the barrister monopoly covers only appellate courts, and barristers must compete directly with solicitors in many trial courts

The bourgeoisie (French: [buʁʒwazi]) is a polysemous French term that can mean: — originally and generally, "those who …

The 16th-century German banker Jakob Fugger and his principal accountant, M. Schwarz, registering an entry to a ledger. The background shows a file cabinet indicating the European cities where the Fugger Bank conducts business. (1517)